› added 5 years ago

283

TIL about The Epic If Gilgamesh. The oldest surviving work of literature in existence dating back over 4,000 years. It features a demigod hunting for immortality and an account of a great flood very simular to the biblical one.

Read more historyonthenet.com

via reddit.com

9Y7jr TIL of William Chester Minor; one of the largest contributors to the Oxford English Dictionary who murdered a man at point-blank and was "not guilty by reason of insanity". He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and spent the next 38 years in a psychiatric hospital up until he died at age 85.
XoZj TIL that Gordon Ramsay challenged a prison cook to an onion cutting competition. The inmate won. Ramsay immediately offered him a job at one of his restaurants upon his release
v1MjL TIL Nasal decongestants works by narrowing the blood vessels in the nasal passages. Overusing them may cause congestion to get worse or it may improve but come back
neBkP TIL that in Roman times, urine was used by slaves in wool-making and was so important to the process of fulling that it was actually taxed.
epn6L TIL Japanese tanks in WWII were so lightly armored that U.S. troops could knock them out using .30 caliber machine gun fire.